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Checking food contents is an important part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle and is critical when shopping for someone with food allergies and certain dietary restrictions. Even though I am a very particular shopper who regularly checks food contents, there are times when I made the mistake of assuming that the product I am purchasing is fine and take it home only to find out that I missed an important ingredient. In some cases, we may have neglected to carefully examine the contents, which could turn out to be big problem for some people.

For example, I don't use anything containing animal derived glycerin or gelatin. No, I am not a vegetarian, I just prefer to eat my animal in a form I can recognize. Buying chewing gum is always a challenge for me because of this. Once I purchased a packet of a specific brand of gum because the contents indicated it had vegetable derived glycerin. On the next occasion, I purchased the same pack of gum assuming that the brand only used vegetable derived glycerin, only to find out, after chomping down a couple sticks, that this pack did not have the vegetable derived glycerin. While I appreciate the fact that this company does make some of its gum with vegetable glycerin, I would have appreciated it a lot more if they identified it boldly on the packaging.

There are different reasons to check food contents. If one is diabetic, has high blood pressure, allergies, a celiac, has high cholesterol or other specific dietary needs, checking the food labels is a required task. For many of us, however, this can be an overwhelming experience. Not only are the list of contents difficult to read but can be confusing at best. There are, however, some ways to effectively check the contents.

Always check the serving size carefully, especially if you are watching your intake of a certain product. So I am looking at my peanut butter jar and it tells me that the nutritional information given is for 15 grams or 1 tablespoon. If one neglected to read this portion, however, it could easily be assumed that the values given are for the entire contents. The center portion will go on to list fat content, cholesterol, carbohydrates, fiber, sugar, sodium content and so on. Below that information, if applicable, you will see a list of the vitamin content of the product.

The nutrition information also tells you what percentage of your daily value (DV), you are consuming in each serving. Many make the mistake of confusing the percent value with percent of

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